a gambling game or method of raising money, as for some public charitable purpose, in which a large number of tickets are sold and a drawing is held for prizes. something whose outcome appears to be determined by chance: They considered combat duty a lottery.

Mathematicians have long known that the odds of winning the lottery can be improved by pooling funds from many investors, a strategy exemplified by Stefan Mandel, who won 14 times and paid out nearly $1.3 million to his investors while keeping just $97,000 for himself. The trick, of course, is finding enough people who can afford to invest the cost of buying tickets that cover all possible combinations.

In the Low Countries in the 16th century, town fortifications were built with money raised through a lottery system, and in colonial-era America, public lotteries helped to fund streets, wharves, and even churches. Benjamin Franklin even sponsored a lottery to raise funds for cannons for the Philadelphia militia during the American Revolution.

Today, state lotteries rely on a large and often devoted constituency: convenience store operators (who provide advertising space for the games); ticket suppliers (heavy contributions to the campaigns of state political candidates are widely reported); teachers (whose salaries are partially financed by lottery revenues); and state legislators (who quickly become accustomed to a new source of “painless” revenue). In fact, little of the initial debate about how lottery proceeds should be used focuses on whether they are a good thing at all.